Political Quotes

“I rise this evening to announce the Democrats will offer no further amendments to the pending legislation until the Republican leader shows us what the final legislation will be. Clearly, the Senate bill--repeal and replace--has failed. Senator Paul's bill--repeal without replace--has also failed. We know the Republicans are not going to take a final vote on the underlying House bill, which is still the pending legislation. Now the Republican leadership team has been telling the press about a yet-to-be-disclosed final bill. If the reports are true, the Republicans will offer a skinny repeal plan. We just heard from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office that under such a plan as reported in the press, 16 million Americans would lose their health insurance and millions more would pay a 20-percent-- 20-percent--increase in their premiums--at least 20 percent. I thank Senator Murray and Senator Wyden for working with CBO so that we could figure out what exactly is going on, if this skinny bill is the bill that is brought to the floor. My Republican friends come to the floor every day to assail the problem of high premiums. If the reporting is accurate and skinny repeal is their plan, it makes premiums far higher than they are today. We don't know if skinny repeal is going to be their final bill, but if it is, the CBO says that it would cause costs to go up and millions to lose insurance.…”